Friday, December 23, 2016

Bought some wine today. This is not the product I purchased, but it caught my eye. I doubt this wine was named with a sociological concept in mind. I'm guessing it was the outcome of a focus group or a spitballing session. In any case, "white girl" is an example of a social location, one's position in society. Other examples of social location include "rich," "middle-class," "homeless," "retired man."

As for the wine I bought, it's called Saturday Night Red. The good news is you don't have to wait until Saturday night to drink it. Also, the price is $9.99 ($7.99 if you roll with coupons, and I certainly do).

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

There's usually a song in my head. Just me, or you too? Right now it's Polly by Nirvana. Phenomenal. "Let me clip your dirty wings." Kobain was a great poet. I love this part:

Polly says her back hurts
She's just as bored as me
She caught me off my guard
Amazes me, the will of instinct

I'm also working with extra nervous energy. It's the first bigly snow storm of the season. It might even count as a blizzard. I secured provisions: ice cream, brownie mix, beer, soup, pasta, cheese, bread, deli turkey, milk. Plus whatever's already in the freezer and on the wine rack. Not our first rodeo. I shoveled once and I'll shovel again soon. Enjoy...

Monday, December 12, 2016

Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times (December
10, 2016) essay, “Dangers of Echo Chambers on Campus,” has been getting a lot
of attention and a lot of criticism since it was published.

Kristof is concerned that college campuses are becoming
one-sided “echo chambers” where only those who speak to the (liberal) choir are
allowed to participate and perform. His intention in this essay is to encourage
a multiplicity of voices on college campuses as a way to foster greater
understanding of divergent viewpoints.

I have been in higher education for over 25 years (7 as a
graduate student and 18 as a full-time faculty member at a regional public
university). I have never met a colleague on my campus or at any conferences
who does not share Kristof’s goal of wanting students to think critically,
analytically, and broadly. Challenging students to consider alternative,
contradictory, and even objectionable viewpoints are the strategies that most of
my colleagues employ as way to instill these higher-order thinking skills.

But in his attempt to champion a diversity of viewpoints on
college campuses, Kristof makes a number of troubling assumptions and draws
some specious conclusions that undercut his argument. Consider the following:

“Repeated studies have found that about 10 percent of
professors in the social sciences or the humanities are Republicans.”

Kristof offers this quote as being symptomatic of the
problem. But he, and others who point to this statistic, never quite explain
why it is the case or why it is so problematic.

Those of us in the social sciences and humanities have
dedicated our lives to studying, contemplating, questioning, discussing,
teaching, and writing about the human condition. If after all of this
intellectual and emotional effort most of us have concluded that the Republican
platform is troubling or not to our liking, shouldn’t that tell us something?
Shouldn’t we trust or at least have some confidence in the “experts” who study
humanity and the conclusions they draw instead of expecting them to negate
their accumulated knowledge and insights?

“We champion tolerance, except for conservatives and
evangelical Christians. We want to be inclusive of people who don’t look like
us — so long as they think like us.”

It would be nice if Kristof offered even just a morsel of
evidence that this sort of closed-mindedness is rampant on college campuses.
Not only is this a hollow claim, but if anything, decades of social scientific
research demonstrate that universities reflect the dominant mode of thought,
speech, morals, and norms of America. In other words, our classrooms and
campuses are most hospitable to and are most easily navigated by students who
are white, Christian, male, middle to upper class, heterosexual, and
able-bodied. If you doubt this, then just ask some students who don’t fit into
these categories if they have ever felt ostracized, stigmatized, or
uncomfortable on their college campus.

“I fear that liberal outrage at Trump’s presidency will
exacerbate the problem of liberal echo chambers, by creating a more hostile
environment for conservatives and evangelicals.”

I’m not sure what Kristoff means when he says that a more hostile
environment will be coming. There are two problems here. First, it is an
exaggeration to call the pre-Trump environment hostile to conservatives and
evangelicals. If a student shares some of the conservative and evangelical
beliefs--that the science behind climate change is a hoax, that homosexuality
is a sin that could be cured through conversion therapy, that whites are more
discriminated against than people of color, that we live in a post-racial and
post-sexist society, and that the world was started through creationism and not
through evolution—and then this student’s views are challenged in class, is
that hostility or is that the uncomfortable journey of critical thinking?

Second, and this goes back to my earlier point, the people
who feel real hostility on most college campuses, despite the
so-called liberal bias, are those students, faculty and staff who are not white,
Christian, male, middle class, heterosexual, and able-bodied. On an everyday
basis, as I’ve heard from students and colleagues, such individuals risk having
their personhood challenged and questioned. That sort of direct confrontation
to the core of who one is, is a much more severe type of hostility than merely
having one’s beliefs challenged.

“But do we really want to caricature half of Americans,
some of whom voted for President Obama twice, as racist bigots?”

I partly agree with Kristof here. I don’t want to caricature
half of Americans as racist bigots. Instead, I want ALL of us to admit that we
have some degree of bigotry and intolerance. We are all caricatures of the
good, wholesome, and virtuous people that we think ourselves to be. If we
have any hope of achieving the type of respect and understanding that Kristof
and I both desire, then we ALL need to be willing to acknowledge our biases,
prejudices, and stereotypes. Our deep and long-standing refusal, or utter
failure, to do this both collectively and individually is probably the greatest
obstacle to reducing hatred and division in American society.

But as for the people who voted for Trump let’s not forget
this one crucial point: Despite all of the analyses of who these voters are or
what motivated them to vote for him, one factor remains irrefutable: those who
voted for Trump were willing to overlook his bigotry, misogyny, nastiness, and
hatred. When they went to the voting booth they did not see bigotry and
misogyny as disqualifying variables for the most powerful political position in
the world. There is something deeply and undeniably troubling about this fact.

“But this election also underscores that we were out of
touch with much of America.”

I’m not sure how Kristof came to this conclusion but he
seems to have forgotten that less than 25% of the population voted for Trump.
More people voted for Clinton. And over 75% of the population did not vote for
Trump. So another way to read the results of the election is to say that Trump
and his campaign of bigotry, misogyny, and hatred are really what is out of
touch with much of America.

This is an excellent short video about W.E.B. Du Bois, and includes mention of the research he did for his 1899 book The Philadelphia Negro. There is audio of Du Bois' voice in the video. There are appearances from scholars Elijah Anderson and Tukufu Zuberi, as well as former Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter. Veronica (Ronnie) Hodges is the narrator.